The present invention relates generally to methods of searching for electronic information in multiple categories of information and the presentation of the results of such searches.
There are currently a wide variety of search engines and searching tools that permit computer users to search for electronic information. Some search engines, such as Google, Altavista, A9 and Yahoo allow users to search general web content. These and other search engines allow users to search narrower and/or other categories of information as well. For example, Google permits users to search such categories as images, news, and various products for sale. Google also allow users to search a variety of categories of the web content organized by topic (e.g., art, business, computers, science, shopping, sports, etc) or various subcategories of content (e.g. on-line mail order catalogs). Many web sites include features that allow users to search for terms used in their web site content and others allow users to search additional databases (such as a database of text from books, music etc.).
Although the existing search engines, searching tools and search interfaces work well, there are continuing efforts to improve the relevance, layout, presentation and usability of various search results.